I recently came across an adoption self-assessment quiz. It reminded me a lot of something my husband and I completed during our premarital counseling. Taking an assessment separately and then comparing the answers is not about hoping that you will each put down the same answers but more about giving a couple a starting point for discussions. We are still in the very beginning of this adoption journey, and we are going to each have to put in lots of time and energy in order to reflect on the following questions before we will be ready to come together and begin any discussions.
1.Why do you want to adopt?
2.On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, how badly do you want to adopt?
3.Who is the driver of wanting this adoption? Will this cause conflict?
4.Will this driver/driven dynamic cause conflict in your relationship?
5.What age child would you prefer to adopt?
6.How firm are you on the age selected above?
7.What disabilities would you be willing to consider in an adoptive child?
8.What racial heritages would you be willing to consider in an adoptive child?
9.Which gender would you prefer in your child?
10.Would you consider twins?
11.Do you feel you are stable in your relationship as a couple without having children?
12.Which friends and family members would you want to tell about your adoption plans? Which would be supportive and which would not?
13.What level of openness are you willing to consider with birthparents?
14.Would you be willing to comply with specific birth family requests regarding child rearing (such as religious instruction, name or schooling)?
15. Where would you be willing to go to adopt?
16.How much time will you take off work during and after the adoption?
17.How much money would you be willing to spend on an adoption?
18.How much economic hardship would that cause?
19.When and how do you feel children should be told they're adopted?
20.Would you support/assist your child if he/she wanted to find, contact or have a relationship with his/her birthparents?
21.Many adoptive parents have 'dry runs' before they actually adopt. How would you handle an adoption that matched with you but did not end up placing?
22. Will you or your spouse change your workload outside the home after the adoption?
23.What do you feel you could contribute to a child?
24.What aspects of childrearing are so important to you that you would find it difficult to compromise (such as discipline, religion, schooling, stay-at-home parenting, etc.)?
25.Are you ready to love an adopted child as much as one you gave birth to biologically?
26.Would you prefer to continue with infertility treatment before seriously pursuing adoption? If so, why?
27.Deep down do you feel like you are being forced to adopt if you want to have children, adoption as a means to build a family is "second best," or that adoption is your "last resort" if you want to be able to have children?
28.What is the ideal adoption situation for you?
29.Ideally, how many children would you like?
30.How long are you willing to wait to adopt?
As you can see, deciding to adopt is only the tip of the iceberg. Stay tuned for more as we make our way through this complex process.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
The Top Ten Myths About Adoption
1. There are no babies, especially American babies.
Of the 100,000 or so adoptions that take place in the United States every year, about 25,000 are of American newborns.
2. Children adopted from abroad are all disabled or disturbed.
The vast majority of international adoptees are healthy, happy children.
3. Adoption takes years (unless you're a celebrity).
Most of our families brought their children home within two years of submitting their paperwork--for many, the process takes less than one year.
4. Adoption costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The average cost of an adoption, before grants and reimbursements, is about the same as the price of a midsized car. It is possible to complete an adoption for a few hundred dollars.
5. Only perfect couples can adopt.
Whether you are gay, straight, single, married, divorced, disabled, rich, poor, professional, unemployed, retired, aged twenty-one or sixty, a pillar of the community or a person with a slightly spotty past, you can adopt a child.
6. Adopted children are "stolen" from their birth families.
Laws in America have multiple safeguards to ensure that a birth mother cannot be coerced or bribed into placing her child for adoption. Some international adoptions have involved bribes, deceit, or downright theft, but there are plenty of adoption agencies that can guide families to absolutely ethical international adoptions.
7. All birth mothers are unstable teenagers.
Most birth mothers are women in their twenties making a well-thought-out choice to give their child a better life than they themselves can provide.
8. Birth parents can come back and take your child.
Once an adoption has been finalized in court, the child is as much yours as if you had given birth.
9. All adoptees are troubled.
Recent long-term studies of adoptees in America show that they are no different in self-esteem and attachment to family from children raised by their biological parents.
10. Adoption always ends in tears.
After thirty years of working with adoptive families, we can promise you that most adoptions end in joy, triumph, and love.
- excerpted from You Can Adopt: An Adoptive Families Guide by Susan Caughman and Isolde Motley
Of the 100,000 or so adoptions that take place in the United States every year, about 25,000 are of American newborns.
2. Children adopted from abroad are all disabled or disturbed.
The vast majority of international adoptees are healthy, happy children.
3. Adoption takes years (unless you're a celebrity).
Most of our families brought their children home within two years of submitting their paperwork--for many, the process takes less than one year.
4. Adoption costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The average cost of an adoption, before grants and reimbursements, is about the same as the price of a midsized car. It is possible to complete an adoption for a few hundred dollars.
5. Only perfect couples can adopt.
Whether you are gay, straight, single, married, divorced, disabled, rich, poor, professional, unemployed, retired, aged twenty-one or sixty, a pillar of the community or a person with a slightly spotty past, you can adopt a child.
6. Adopted children are "stolen" from their birth families.
Laws in America have multiple safeguards to ensure that a birth mother cannot be coerced or bribed into placing her child for adoption. Some international adoptions have involved bribes, deceit, or downright theft, but there are plenty of adoption agencies that can guide families to absolutely ethical international adoptions.
7. All birth mothers are unstable teenagers.
Most birth mothers are women in their twenties making a well-thought-out choice to give their child a better life than they themselves can provide.
8. Birth parents can come back and take your child.
Once an adoption has been finalized in court, the child is as much yours as if you had given birth.
9. All adoptees are troubled.
Recent long-term studies of adoptees in America show that they are no different in self-esteem and attachment to family from children raised by their biological parents.
10. Adoption always ends in tears.
After thirty years of working with adoptive families, we can promise you that most adoptions end in joy, triumph, and love.
- excerpted from You Can Adopt: An Adoptive Families Guide by Susan Caughman and Isolde Motley
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
The Reason For The Season
On Sunday we will celebrate Christmas. The day will entail family, food, and likely a mound of presents. It is difficult to not get swept up in Christmas shopping, gift wrapping, cookie baking, picture taking, Christmas card sending, tree decorating, etc. I sometimes find myself stressed and frazzled over the Christmas season and all of those things that I feel like we have/need to do. It is difficult sometimes to remember the reason for the season--a celebration of Jesus' birth.
One way our family has found to honor and celebrate Jesus' birthday is to give some of our time, talent, or treasure to the community around us. Coincidentally, the treasure part happens to fall very close to an important tax deadline (i.e., December 31st). This year we plan to give to an organization that I have followed for a number of years now (and even began the job interview process with right before we found out I was pregnant with Cate)--Jonathan's Place.
Jonathan's Place takes care of Dallas area child abuse victims through three programs: a "home-style" emergency shelter for abused, abandoned and neglected children, a Foster & Adoptive Family Program, and a Girls Treatment Program (long-term residential care to girls age 10-17 who need therapeutic care). Organizations like these provide such a great service to those kids who have already been through more than an innocent child should ever have to endure. If you'd like to learn more about Jonathan's Place or would like to make a donation to the organization, check out their website at www.jpkids.org.
One way our family has found to honor and celebrate Jesus' birthday is to give some of our time, talent, or treasure to the community around us. Coincidentally, the treasure part happens to fall very close to an important tax deadline (i.e., December 31st). This year we plan to give to an organization that I have followed for a number of years now (and even began the job interview process with right before we found out I was pregnant with Cate)--Jonathan's Place.
Jonathan's Place takes care of Dallas area child abuse victims through three programs: a "home-style" emergency shelter for abused, abandoned and neglected children, a Foster & Adoptive Family Program, and a Girls Treatment Program (long-term residential care to girls age 10-17 who need therapeutic care). Organizations like these provide such a great service to those kids who have already been through more than an innocent child should ever have to endure. If you'd like to learn more about Jonathan's Place or would like to make a donation to the organization, check out their website at www.jpkids.org.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
National Adoption Awareness Month
November is National Adoption Awareness Month. In the State of Texas alone, more than 6,000 children and teens are waiting to be adopted, and more than a third of them are 10 years old or older. These statistics are astonishing! How many of these children will never be adopted and will age out of the system? How many of these children (if any) will be prepared to be on their own when they do age out of the system?
Based on my reading and research so far, it appears that adopting a child out of foster care is the quickest and least expensive route to adoption. The drawback for some adopting parents is the desire to adopt an infant. For others it is the fear of adopting a child with potential psychological issues due to abuse or neglect suffered at the hands of his or her biological parents. Having been blessed with biological children of my own, I am open to skipping the middle-of-the-night feedings and the diapers, but are we prepared to bring home a child who, rightfully so based on his or her life experiences, might be afraid of the world and the people in it? I had always thought our potential adopted child would be our youngest child, but maybe that wouldn't be the case. Maybe he or she would fall somewhere in the middle...putting things into God's hands can be so difficult sometimes.
Based on my reading and research so far, it appears that adopting a child out of foster care is the quickest and least expensive route to adoption. The drawback for some adopting parents is the desire to adopt an infant. For others it is the fear of adopting a child with potential psychological issues due to abuse or neglect suffered at the hands of his or her biological parents. Having been blessed with biological children of my own, I am open to skipping the middle-of-the-night feedings and the diapers, but are we prepared to bring home a child who, rightfully so based on his or her life experiences, might be afraid of the world and the people in it? I had always thought our potential adopted child would be our youngest child, but maybe that wouldn't be the case. Maybe he or she would fall somewhere in the middle...putting things into God's hands can be so difficult sometimes.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
A Seed Has Been Planted
"When you adopt it certainly does not change this world. It changes, forever and always, only the world of that one child."
Here I sit on a random Wednesday night rereading this quote over and over again. My daughter, Cate, now 5 1/2 months old, is back asleep having just stirred in her crib while my son, Will, 25 months old, is sound asleep in his toddler bed surrounded by an array of pillows, blankets, loveys, stuffed animals and his beloved paci. I have what most would consider the ideal family--loving husband, a son, a daughter, and a 2 1/2 year old chocolate lab. We live a comfortable life and have been blessed by God in so many ways.
It's not uncommon for me to hear "So, you have your boy and your girl so I guess you're done having kids." Having come from a family with three children and my husband being one of five, we both want to have a bigger family (with bigger in today's terms meaning four). I'm not exactly sure when the idea of adoption entered my brain. Maybe it has always been there. It might have started forming whenever I entered the Big Brothers Big Sisters program during my undergraduate years and mentored a poverty-stricken little girl or maybe it was during law school when I participated in a Children's Rights Clinic and spent a semester serving as an attorney ad litem for children involved in child abuse cases. The formation is less important than the fact that adoption is something I know deep down in the core of my being that I want to do. This leads me into my first query on this long journey: Is it just the idea of adoption that I like so much or is my family truly ready to begin the long, expensive, and sometimes painful journey that might lie ahead?
I have decided to begin recording my thoughts today for no good reason other than I went to a bookstore today and bought my first book on adoption. The time between now and the day we might bring home our adopted child is sure to be quite long. First of all, my husband and I would like to have at least one more biological child, and we would like to do that while I am younger in age. Unless God has other plans for us, we see ourselves having our third biological child before beginning the official adoption journey. In a way this is hard for me. I find myself so eager to begin finding that child, our child, who deserves a family to call his or her own, yet I know that this is not quite the time nor have we completed the adequate reflection and preparation necessary to adopt. This is a lifelong decision and one that I take very seriously. For now, I will read, learn, process, reflect, and pray. For now I will stick to Part I: Thinking About Adopting? and leave the rest of the planning to God.
If you care to join us on our journey please continue to read on, knowing that on this long road there may be periods where I write more or less. I welcome any thoughts, prayers, stories, or words of wisdom you have to offer.
Here I sit on a random Wednesday night rereading this quote over and over again. My daughter, Cate, now 5 1/2 months old, is back asleep having just stirred in her crib while my son, Will, 25 months old, is sound asleep in his toddler bed surrounded by an array of pillows, blankets, loveys, stuffed animals and his beloved paci. I have what most would consider the ideal family--loving husband, a son, a daughter, and a 2 1/2 year old chocolate lab. We live a comfortable life and have been blessed by God in so many ways.
It's not uncommon for me to hear "So, you have your boy and your girl so I guess you're done having kids." Having come from a family with three children and my husband being one of five, we both want to have a bigger family (with bigger in today's terms meaning four). I'm not exactly sure when the idea of adoption entered my brain. Maybe it has always been there. It might have started forming whenever I entered the Big Brothers Big Sisters program during my undergraduate years and mentored a poverty-stricken little girl or maybe it was during law school when I participated in a Children's Rights Clinic and spent a semester serving as an attorney ad litem for children involved in child abuse cases. The formation is less important than the fact that adoption is something I know deep down in the core of my being that I want to do. This leads me into my first query on this long journey: Is it just the idea of adoption that I like so much or is my family truly ready to begin the long, expensive, and sometimes painful journey that might lie ahead?
I have decided to begin recording my thoughts today for no good reason other than I went to a bookstore today and bought my first book on adoption. The time between now and the day we might bring home our adopted child is sure to be quite long. First of all, my husband and I would like to have at least one more biological child, and we would like to do that while I am younger in age. Unless God has other plans for us, we see ourselves having our third biological child before beginning the official adoption journey. In a way this is hard for me. I find myself so eager to begin finding that child, our child, who deserves a family to call his or her own, yet I know that this is not quite the time nor have we completed the adequate reflection and preparation necessary to adopt. This is a lifelong decision and one that I take very seriously. For now, I will read, learn, process, reflect, and pray. For now I will stick to Part I: Thinking About Adopting? and leave the rest of the planning to God.
If you care to join us on our journey please continue to read on, knowing that on this long road there may be periods where I write more or less. I welcome any thoughts, prayers, stories, or words of wisdom you have to offer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)